Brothers

by Naja Melanoleuca

A series of one shots that focus on the Halstead brothers. Some angst, some bonding, nothing ridiculous.

4. Catholic Guilt - Jay, Will, Mouse, Conno

Catholic Guilt

Dr. Will Halstead was never the type of person that lamented his choice to be a doctor, even with the long hours, annoyances of dealing with insurance (both his and the patient's), the crippling student loans, and the fact that every person you met wanted free medical advice. But today, he was close. He replaced his stethoscope around his neck after his third scrub change of the day. There was a vicious stomach bug going around and he had been puked on no less than 4 times today and it wasn't even 10 am yet.

Maggie waved him to his next patient, a heavy set woman vomiting into an emesis bag. He rolled his eyes and entered. He concentrated on her so didn't pay much attention when Olinsky and Voight walked in. Seeing cops coming in and out of the ED was commonplace. In fact, now that he recognized more of them, he realized how often they showed up. That was probably why seeing them didn't set off alarm bells.

In fact, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, even when Maggie called him over and said that the police wanted to talk to him. Police talked to ED docs all the time. He had talked to two uniforms right when he got in and some people from robbery-homicide were there on Monday. He made sure to slather his hands in extra hand sanitizer before going to talk to them in the doctor's lounge.

He walked in and both turned to him. Voight held his hand out but Will held his up in a placating gesture. "Sorry, I would shake your hand but there is a pretty virulent strain of Norwalk virus going around and I have been treating patients all morning. In fact, I recommend that you stop in the restroom on the way out and scrub your hands for at least 30 seconds and rinse in the hottest water you can stand." He suggested. "So what can I do for you?"

"Will, why don't you sit down," Olinsky said. There was a soft, almost compassionate quality to his voice Will had never heard before. It finally set off all sorts of alarm bells. He wondered where Jay was. Usually they sent Jay to the ED because they were brothers and Will always let more slip to him.

"I'm fine standing," he said. "What's going on?" Seriously, where was his brother?

"Will, there is no easy way to say this." He knew what was coming. He had started conversations that way before. They were going to tell him his stupid, reckless brother had run out of luck.

"Is he alive?" Will asked, his own voice sounding dull, even to his own ears.

"We don't know," Voight said. Will nodded, he wasn't sure why.

"What happened, what?" He stuttered, wishing he had sat down. He felt like the room was spinning around him and his fingers were tingling.

"Jay was undercover. Things went bad. We couldn't get to him in time. He fought like hell but they took him." Hank explained. Of course that was how a cop would explain it. Make him feel better to think that Jay didn't go down easy, because that was so important to him right now, the manner in which his brother was taken.

"He's missing?" Saying those words made Will want to throw up. Olinsky nodded yes. "No, not again," he felt and heard his voice crack and Alvin and Voight looked at each other in confusion. "Not again, I can't do this again," he mumbled and closed his eyes because he knew they were flooding with tears.

"We will do everything we can to get him back, Will, trust me," Hank said, putting a hand on his shoulder. He appreciated it. He knew Jay had mixed emotions about his boss. He respected him but often didn't actually like him. He knew Jay was still a little pissy with him about tricking Will into an interogation. Will didn't take it personally but certainly Jay did. Something about Voight being a hypocrite and only having the backs of certain squad members and not others.

"I know you will, I just," he stopped and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He was bright enough to realize he was going to be useless the rest of the day.

"Try not to worry, doc," Olinsky said, "your brother is tough, he'll be fine." Will nodded as they walked out. Jay was tough, of course he was tough, he was Ranger and he was SWAT and now he was Intelligence so yeah, he was tough. But he was human, and human's were fragile things and broke far easier than most people realized. Will knew this intimately since it was his job to put them back together. Not that his brother would ever let him help put his loose pieces back in. No, he claimed they didn't shake and fall on the floor when no one was looking, but Will could see them littering his life. Those pieces of him that had cracked off and were now missing or mostly held on by duct tape, willpower, and denial. Some of those cracks were so bad that even a light tap would shatter him and show people that he wasn't anywhere near as tough as everyone thought he was.

He could feel his hands shaking and stuffed them in his pockets, because he wasn't tough. He needed to get out of here. He needed to call his dad, he needed to pray, he needed to do something but what, because nothing he did could or would make any difference because he was helpless, just like before. Only this time Jay was probably only a few miles from him instead of on the other side of the world. He wasn't sure if that made it better or worse.

He pulled his coat off, hanging it in his locker. It took him three tries to actually get it on the hook between his hands shaking and his eyes tearing up. He couldn't deal with this again, not when he finally had a chance for him and Jay to actually be real brothers again instead of two dudes that had the same parents that occasionally saw each other. It was cool getting to know Jay as a relatively well adjusted adult instead of the angry 14 year old he had been when Will left for school, or the shattered soldier that had returned from Afghanistan. That couldn't all end now. It just couldn't.

He grabbed his things and told the chief he had a family emergency and had to leave. He barely even nodded at him and Will really hoped he was actually listening and called someone else. He couldn't spare enough mental energy to care though, which was kind of sad.

He hurried to his car and fumbled with his keyes, needing to leave but as soon as he sat down, he realized he didn't actually have anywhere to go. There was no magic place or thing that was going to get Jay home. There wasn't even any place he could go for solace. He could go to his dad's house but he was probably at work and even if he weren't, he wasn't sure he wanted to stress him out until they knew something for sure. He wasn't young and he had a bad heart, he didn't need this kind of shock, but neither did Will. He almost wished that Voight hadn't told him, had just left him in the dark until they knew if Jay was dead or they had him back, ripping off the bandaid per se. This waiting, this limbo where your mind went to every dark thing that could happen and not being able to do shit wasn't a quick pain, it was like dying cell by cell.

And dying could be what was happening to his brother right now and there was nothing he could do. The tears that had been swimming in his eyes couldn't be held back any longer, and between one moment and the next, he was hunched over his steering wheel sobbing.

Connor was feeling pretty good on his way out. His operation had been a success, he had gotten a good amount of sleep in the on-call room, and unlike the ED doctors, he wasn't stuck dealing with a bunch of people with a stomach virus. He stopped by the ED desk to finish filling out something on a chart and only marginally listened to the conversation.

"It is never a good thing when two cops want to see you by yourself," Noah Sexton said, as two police officers walked out. He had seen them before but didn't know their names. He remembered the one with the mustache from active shooter training they had had a month or so ago but the other dude only looked marginally familiar.

"Especially if they send a sergeant," Maggie added.

There was more chatter, gossip really, that he mostly ignored as he finished filling out something he forgot to note on an iPad. He tuned back in to Dr. Choi's blase tone. "They were in there all of 4 minutes. That wasn't an interrogation. It was a notification," he said before leaving to check on a patient. He let the info slide off of him as he imagined pancakes. Screw that he wanted pan perdu from this little diner he loved where they used thick cut brioche and slathered it with syrup and cream cheese, with candied oranges or cherries. It was amazing.

He knew he should actually go to the gym or go and get something healthy, because being healthy was important. And so was his ego because he was used to being the best looking guy on staff but here he had to deal with Dr. Cheekbones for days with zero body fat and brooding eyes. And with Dr. 6'1" Kiss-Me-I'm-Irish, with legs that went up to his armpits and puppy dog eyes. He was not comfortable feeling inferior to other people in general, especially other doctors. It really annoyed him.

But he figured he had earned a treat and he could take a nap and work out later, after all he was no slouch, he was still pretty good looking, and a doctor, and rich. He let that thought console him as he walked to his car. He dug his keys out and his eyes happened to travel to Dr. Halstead's and he noticed the man was hunched over his wheel, shaking. He took two steps over to check on him before stopping because it wasn't unusual for doctors to need a minute and you couldn't do that if someone was bugging you.

He decided he probably had just had a rough case and needed a cry and was going to turn around until he saw the door open and the redhead lurch out to vomit. Connor hurried over, with a hand on his shoulder and another on his back, as the taller man retched. Poor guy probably caught the stupid bug.

"Hey man, I've got you," he said by way of a greeting. When he was done, he handed Will the bottle of water he had had in his bag. Luckily it was unopened. "Here, are you good?" he asked. The man's eyes were red and slightly swollen. It must have been a really bad case.

"No, not really," he answered. His voice sounded thick and choked.

"Let's get you back into the ED," Connor hooked his bag across his body, preparing to help the much taller man up.

"No, I don't need to go in. It's only a stress reaction. I'm just having a really bad day," he said, his voice breaking on the word day. Connor noticed his hands were shaking, in fact most of his body was actually trembling. If he had been stressed enough to induce vomiting then shakes were not out of the question but he still thought he should get checked out. Will was pretty high strung in general but anything that freaked him out this bad would probably need more than him to deal with.

He went to try and convince the famously stubborn mick, at least that was Maggie's favorite nickname for him behind his back, when something he heard earlier clicked into place. "It's not an interrogation, it's a notification." Dr. Choi had said that. Why would a Sergeant and a detective come to do a notification for a patient? He recognized the guy with the mustache, he was in the same unit as Will's brother. It all clicked into place. Fuck!

He had only formally met Halstead's brother once. It was during an active shooter training. The ED had a bet to see if they could pick out which one of the cops was related to Will. Most of them, including himself, picked another guy, Rucheck, Ruzek, something like that. He had been tall, slightly coarse, and had the same warm brown eyes Will had. He most certainly did not even consider the guy leaning in the corner staring at everyone like border collie thinking about gathering a flock. The only ones that had gotten it right were Dr. Choi, who took one look at them and picked out Jay saying only, "Will said his brother was a Ranger, that guy looks like a Ranger," as explanation.

Reese had gotten it right too by saying, "it's him. He has green eyes, which is most common in people of Celtic descent and they have no melanin in them and he has red freckles so he has at least one copy of the MC1R mutation, probably two. Do you sunburn easily and dislike dentists?" She had said.

Jay had just smiled at her and said, "you stand very close when you talk." Will had been fighting not to laugh when Reese made things even more awkward.

"You are very handsome, too bad you would have to have children with a woman who also carried at least one copy of the mutation to get more than 25% chance of your offspring inheriting your eye color." By this point Will was the color of a tomato from trying not to laugh at his brother and so were half of the other cops.

"Willhite was right, catnip," a hispanic looking man said, making Will's brother flip him off. Jay had seemed like a fairly nice and relaxed guy during the ribbing, but once they broke into their practice teams, he had ended up with him and went from random guy leaning in the corner to Marine drill sergeant. It would have been impressive if it hadn't been kind of frightening as he shot specifically made powder filled paintballs at them while they practiced not getting hit. After four hours he managed to kill all of them every time, except for Dr. Choi, who managed to survive about half the time. He had shot Connor himself in the forehead twice, once in the back of the head, and at least 3 times in the chest. Rhodes had complained and Jay's answer was, "then learn to duck." It had been an incredibly unpleasant experience and he was now thoroughly convinced he might as well just carry a white flag if a shooter ever showed up because there was no way anyone was surviving.

Dr. Choi had tried to make him and everyone else feel better by pointing out that Jay had obviously had a lot of training and most situations people weren't going to be able to shoot like that. It helped but 30 seconds later he shot Dr. Manning in the boob and yelled, "being pregnant doesn't make you bulletproof so duck!"

By the time they rejoined the other groups they all looked like Jackson Pollock painting and everyone else only had one or two dots on them. He pretty much decided at that point he didn't want to have anything to do with Detective Halstead ever again. He was way too intimidating. Though he and Dr. Choi seemed to hit it off, which was odd because Dr. Choi was about as personable as a cactus.

"Will," Rhodes started, he had pulled himself more together but was still shaking. He dropped his keys on the floorboard of his car.

"I have to go."

"Hey, I don't think you should be driving anywhere, let me take you wherever you need to go," he tried, turning on the kindness. It always worked.

"I, I'm fine, I," he stuttered, showing he very much was not.

"Hold our your hands," he said and Will compiled. They shook like leaves. "You wouldn't let someone in your state leave the ED and drive so why do you think I am going to let you?" Will hung his head in concession of the point before standing. "My car is right over here."

The taller man followed him to his car and sat down in the passenger seat, hugging his bag to his body. Connor wondered what to do now. He probably should have called one of the nurses or Dr. Manning or something because they would be better at consoling him. He and Will didn't really get along that well. But he was here so he might as well try. Will had helped him with someone he cared about, in his own high handed, dick bag way.

"Where do you want to go?" He asked as he turned the car on.

"I, I, I don't know," he said, closing his eyes for a moment.

"How about some food and we can figure it out from there?" he suggested and Will just nodded. Rhodes pulled out into traffic heading to his favorite breakfast and brunch place. At least he could get his pan perdu.

"I saw the police talking to you," he said after a few minutes, hoping to get Will talking. He looked like he was half about to curl into a ball, sucking his thumb and start crying and half shoot out of his skin from nerves.

"My brother is missing, was kidnapped, or something," he said, sounding flat. "They don't know," his voice caught and Connor could see, out of the corner of his eye, a tear run down Will's cheek. He kept his eyes trained on the road.

"I am sure the police will find him in no time. I mean don't they go all out for their own?" He said, trying to sound optimistic instead of letting his view of the Chicago Police Department show. While man individual cops were fine, he felt the system was rife with corruption, most cops were too brutal to the citizenry, and it was stacked against minorities. But now was probably not the time to have that philosophical discussion with Will.

"I am sure they will, but, until then," he started then swallowed. "Until then I have to sit here and wonder what is happening to him, if he will even come home, and if he does, what shape he will be in this time. And I don't know if I can do that again." The last part was said quietly.

They pulled into the restaurant and were seated. Will had managed to mostly pull himself back together and his eyes went a little wide at the selection and prices on the menu. Connor wondered if he should have selected someplace a little more working class. "Order whatever you want, on me," he said, trying to sound casual about it. He didn't want Will to think that it was charity.

"You have never had to eat spam on white bread sandwiches and it shows," Will said with a look like he was trying to be rude.

"No, I don't think I have ever even eaten Spam, much less on white bread." He smiled.

"It's disgusting. It is a salty brick of over processed meat sponge, and I use the term meat loosely, that comes in a can and can survive a nuclear war." Will groused, clearly more comfortable talking about canned meat like sponge instead of why he was crying and puking in the hospital parking lot.

After they ordered Connor broached the subject. "Will, I'm sure everything will be fine."

"I'm glad that someone is," he countered.

"Why don't you tell me something about Jay. I have only met him once, at the active shooter thing. He seems like an intense guy." That was a polite way of saying he seemed like an extreme hyper focused weirdo that stared and shot pregnant women in the boobs. He didn't want to make Halstead mad by insulting his missing brother.

"That is a bit of an understatement," Will conceded. "He can super intense, he has always been like that. He loves anything where there are binary answers, right and wrongs, anything that is precision or practice based." Will took his juice the waitress brought him and turned it around in his hand.

"Jay was always kind of a weird kid," Rhodes wondered how far back Will was going to go with this conversation but he rolled with it. He was strangely interested in Will's history. How did a guy from the South Side end up at Columbia and John Hopkins and then Sloan Kettering and Grossman for residency and fellowship in Plastic Surgery, then end up back as a resident in the busiest ED in Chicago. He should be making 7 figures in Manhattan, not driving a shitty car and dealing with gunshot wounds.

"What was so weird about him?"

"He was always strangely independant. Like he never wanted you to help him with anything or be too clingy with him. I remember our mom used to get kind of upset when he was about 3, because she would pull him into her lap for a cuddle, and he would allow it for about 30 seconds then squirm away to sit where no one was touching him.

"He was always super athletic too. He never seemed to have that clumsy kid stage where he tripped over his own feet. He always had super good body awareness, unlike me who still occasionally trips over my own feet." Will smiled self-deprecatingly.

"I remember I must have been about 10 so Jay was 6 and we watched a Karate Kid Marathon the week after school ended because it pouring and we both decided we wanted to try martial arts. Our mom found somebody that taught for free at a community center and enrolled us. I lost interest in it pretty quickly because there was nothing to figure out, just nitpicky movements but Jay was amazing at it. And he loved it. The guy teaching said that our parents needed to find him a better place to train and our dad picked up extra shifts to pay for him to take lessons at a Karate Dojo. That place went out of business like a year later and he had to switch to Taekwondo because it was the only other place my parents could afford and he did that till he was fifteen or sixteen. He won a couple of tournaments and was invited to Nationals 3 or 4 times but he never got to go."

"That is sad, why couldn't he ever go?"

"Because that shit is expensive. The tournaments are always in like LA or Miami and by the time you get flights, hotels, regulation uniforms, safety equipment because he was junior, and entry fees, it was like $2500-$3000 a pop. No way a lunch lady and cabby could afford that." Will explained as he sipped his juice. Connor wanted to kick himself for asking. Access and money were two things he never considered in his plans because they were two things he had always had.

"It must sound ridiculous to you," Will said, looking at his glass.

"Money doesn't buy happiness or a good family." Connor pointed out for some reason.

"No, but it does buy security and lack of worry about if you have to choose between food or rent that month," he took another sip and Connor felt suitably chastised.

"Does he still do it? I have always found martial arts amazing to watch though I never did them myself."

"He doesn't do Taekwondo anymore, he said it was too impractical for actual combat but he can still do the crazy kicks and stand on one foot and do a split into the air and rest a drink on the bottom of his foot." Will chuckled. "Ruzek didn't believe me when I said he could do it so everyone in the bar pitched in $5 to get him to do it." Connor had actually been there that night. It was his first trip to Molly's. He hadn't known who Jay was at the time but he remembered his show of flexibility and he had ended it by moving it off his foot, then jumping up to kick it with his other foot, slamming it into the wall above and behind Will's head so he ended up covered in beer and broken glass.

"He does do something else, Krav something and some type of Jujitsu. I don't remember, even though he has told me a hundred times. I know he has black or brown belt in the first one, but I'm not sure. It is some dark color that means he is high up in the ranking but he doesn't do tournaments anymore. He refuses to play fight, as he calls it. He won't even do the charity boxing match between the firefighters and Police no matter how much people bug him too.

"Gabby joked they were going to do a special collection to convince him to do it because everyone wanted to see him and Severide fight. Which seems weird because I don't think they would even be in the same weight class. They are about the same height but Kelly has to have 15-20 pounds on him. Plus, I am pretty sure that Jay would destroy him." Rhodes just nodded, not sure what to say. He had no idea that there was a boxing match and no clue who Severide was or why people might want to see him and Jay shirtless and going old school Irish on each other.

"But if it gives you any comfort, he did go to state and nations twice for soccer because the school and the community paid for that," Will explained. Rhodes could see it, he looked like the type of person that had been a soccer player. Good soccer players always had that lean lanky build and Jay definitely did, plus he looked like the kind of guy that probably always had skinned knees.

"What position did he play?" Having spend years in Mexico and Dubia, he had had to develop a taste for futball or never have anything to talk to people about.

"He started out as a striker but by his junior year he was a center midfielder, at least when he wasn't benched for fighting. He was really good at it too. Martial arts helped him develop fast feet, super good balance, and freakish reflexes. He actually got a scholarship to Notre Dame to play soccer." Will said, running his finger over the condensation on the table.

"I didn't know he went there. So did my father."

"He didn't, he got in, he never went. He joined the Army instead."

"Why? Why on Earth would he join the army instead of going to the best school in the Midwest? He could have still come home every weekend, it's like a hour and a half drive." Connor couldn't imagine a reason that joining the army was better than Notre Dame. He had wanted to go there most of his life, until he decided to rebel of course.

"He didn't have a car, but to be honest, I think the 'close to home' was one of the reasons he didn't want to go." Their food arrived and Connor dug in, while Will played with his eggs.

"Jay, he didn't," Will started then stopped. "Our dad, he didn't believe in higher education. A man starts work as soon as he graduates. I wanted to go to college and be a doctor and he thought it was a waste of time and money. We got into a huge fight the night before I left for New York. I ended up sleeping in the bus station. He never really forgave me for leaving and he took it out on Jay.

"I mean he is a typical low class Irish father and I mean that in the most stereotypical way imaginable. He drank, he gambled, he was sometimes violent." Connor felt his eyes go wide and Will clarified. "He wasn't abusive or anything. We always a roof over our head and food to eat. And most of the time when we did cop a beating we deserved it. But he wasn't above whipping beer bottles at your head or smacking you around to make a point but nothing excessive. Jay always caught it way worse than me because he was so independent and stubborn. I would just say or do whatever to make our dad calm down and just move on with life. Jay was physically incapable of de escalating a situation with him. And the worst was when he would go after our Mom. Jay would go ballistic and get in his face and yell and try to fight him."

"He had training though, that had to matter." Connor was unsurprised to hear any of this about the Halstead household. He had kind of assumed it just by knowing he was Irish and from Canaryville, but the fact that Will thought that providing the bare minimum a parent should of food and shelter was somehow enough was a little sad. And the less said of his view that hitting a child was ever acceptable or normal the better.

"You would think but our dad is like my size but stockier. Jay doesn't carry weight, even now he is like 165 with his boots on and he works for that. Back then he was maybe a 130, 140 and only really knew competition techniques in a highly stylized form of aerial combat that he will happily point out to you is incredibly impractical for most situations."

"I see."

"But when I left, apparently things got a lot worse. My dad drank more, was worse to my mom, Jay got more and more angry. He started fighting at school and arguing with teachers. He even wanted to drop out of soccer but my dad read him the riot act about being a quitter and he stayed, even though our mom was the one that was adamant he keep playing. I had a friend that was still in school and he said sometimes Jay would come to school with bruises on his face or a uniform that looked like he had slept in the park. I talked to him a few times about it but there wasn't really anything I could do. I told him to just take till he was old enough to get away, like I did. But I felt guilty as shit that I couldn't do more. But that got better, the longer I was gone, the less I thought about it or him and the more I tried to pretend to be someone different, more cultured, more suave, more like you, while praying no one at Columbia saw me bussing tables and cleaning bathrooms." Will said and Connor was surprised. Between the two of them, he was maybe more liked but Will was way more respected.

In many ways, at least until this conversation, Rhodes envied Will. He had roots, he had a family, he had convictions and the loyalty of his peers. He had friends that were there for him. Who cared if he didn't grow up super wealthy? But then again everyone wanted to be what they weren't.

"Near the end of our freshman year, our mom was diagnosed with stage 3 invasive ductal carcinoma that was triple negative."

"I'm sorry," Connor said because while not a death sentence it was certainly life in prison.

"I am guessing she had the BRCA1 mutation, though she wasn't tested. I carry it but it doesn't really do anything to men except make you contemplate about getting a vasectomy." He smiled.

"That is a little harsh," Rhodes threw in. Halstead sounded like he was advocating eugenics or something.

"Maybe but to be fair I am also a 6'1" red head so I probably shouldn't be in the gene pool anyway," he joked. "Actually genetics are kind of funny. I only have one copy of the MR1C gene, the one that causes red hair but Jay has two but only his body hair is red anymore," Will threw in as a non sequitur. But he had to agree genetics were weird and oddly Jay did seem like more of ginger than Will even though Will actually had bright red hair. It was the freckles, he decided. Jay had the freckles and the pasty white skin you associated with gingers.

"That is probably more of a reason," Connor joked. Hoping Will didn't take it as an insult.

Will just smiled and continued. "But yeah she got pretty sick and had to have her breast removed along with all the lymph nodes and 16 rounds of chemo and 12 rounds of radiation. She couldn't work through most of it and Catholic Schools don't have great health plans for the lunch ladies. They were nice though, and let Jay keep attending tuition free because she did still work some and he was helping their soccer team make state. But my dad had to work multiple double shifts a week and Jay was, what's the term, parentified at 15 fucking years old.

"I thought about giving up, you know, moving back to help and getting a normal job so there was more money coming in. It would certainly have been easier than going to school and working 3 jobs and having to plan out every 15 minutes to make sure I got stuff done and every dollar to make sure I could pay for food, housing, and books. But my mother talked me out of it, though. She told me she was proud and to make sure to succeed, that was all she needed from me and that she would be sitting in the front row when I graduated Medical School and clapping harder than anyone else." A soft smile was on his face as he talked about her. Connor had never had that type of relationship with his own mother. She had been too damaged herself to prop him up. "It meant the world to me, to hear her say that. My family wasn't big on affirmation or positive feedback.

"But Jay didn't have the option to not be there. He became the de facto caretaker, cook, maid, grocery shopper, basically everything. I do know it really bothered my mom though, because she felt like she was ruining his high school years. I always told her that wasn't true but he for sure didn't have the more relaxed and carefree experience I had. She insisted he keep up with soccer because he loved it and was so good at it. She figured it was his way out. but he had to drop out of track and eventually martial arts because of the cost. She wanted to make sure he still had something that made him happy.

"But like I said, he didn't complain, he just swallowed it all and when he couldn't anymore he lashed out at other people, sometimes violently, which sadly he still does. He got in fights, he caused problems at school, he acted out. I am pretty sure our dad probably whaled on him for it, which no doubt made it worse. It really bothered our mom, that Jay and our dad were always fighting and that he was misbehaving at school. I thought I could fix it so I called him at what would have been the end of our sophomore year and told him, with my whopping 20 years of wisdom, to act like a man and help out and stop being a child and stressing our parents out. It never fucking occurred to me he was a kid and all that shitty behavior was because he was lonely and he needed someone to listen to him but none of us ever did and the shittiest thing about it, was that set the pattern for pretty much how he deals with things, to this day." Will admitted.

"Our mom, she beat the odds though and she got better after nearly 2 years of treatment. But by then, Jay didn't have many friends and didn't seem to want any. The only reason he went to prom was because his best friend asked him to," Will explained.

"I thought after she got better that things would go back to normal, and they did, somewhat. But Jay stayed angry. Not just angry at my dad but like angry at life, the universe, and everything." Connor felt a smile on his face at Will's reference to Douglas Adams. "This sounds awful but he was one step away from the type that would shoot up the place."

"I tried to talk to him about it but he never wanted to. He blew off when I asked or just didn't talk to me. Stonewalling became his default communication setting and thank god that hasn't changed," Will lamely joked.

"He was always at his friend Abby's house, which was probably the one normal high school thing he did. He used to sneak into her bedroom at night and even though she went to the same Catholic school we did, her mom took her to get birth control pills so that it was safe for him to sneak in. To this day I don't actually know if they were sleeping together or if they were just friends." Will smiled slightly. "I think her parents realized that things were tough at home for him and that was why they put up with it. They knew sometimes he just needed a break. He is still really close to them, even though Abby left Chicago. I couldn't tell you the names of most of my high school girlfriends much less their parents' but Jay is like that, loyal.

"When he got into Notre Dame, I was so fucking proud of him because our parents always bucketed us. I was the smart one and Jay was the athletic one, even though I played baseball all through junior high and high school and he got good grades but nope, I was smart, he was dumb. He was athletic, I was lazy. But I had graduated from Columbia and decided to come home for the summer between college and med school to spend some time with my mom and Jay. Also not having to work three freaking jobs all summer and having rent and food covered sounded like heaven. I was surprised Jay wasn't happier about getting to go to school. I mean he loved playing soccer and being recognized and recruited by a division 1 team, that is something to be proud of, especially coming from a small, private Catholic school on the southside of Chicago that wasn't known for athletics. I mean he basically won the lottery by getting a full ride. And I mean full ride, housing, food, books, stipend, like all the shit they do to recruit sports talent, while ignoring us underfunded nerds.

But he wasn't that excited. I suspect a lot of it was because our dad just kept going after him. He gave shit about soccer being a girly sport and he should have spent his time on baseball or football, even though our school didn't have a football team. And about college being a waste and him not being a man, and all the same shit he said to me but Jay didn't have a definite goal in mind like I did, so I think it was harder for him. I think our dad just wore him down. He told him he was too dumb to do anything more than find a rich wife that he could cook and clean for like a good, little house husband.

"Anyway, one night, my dad was drunk and he starts going at Jay and Jay had had enough of it and pops off at him. My dad starts throwing punches and my mom gets in the middle of it trying to stop them. At that moment a few things became really obvious to me, one was that I didn't really ever want to come home again and two, was that this had clearly happened before probably more than once. Mom managed to get Jay to leave but not before our dad caught our mom in the face with a punch. I figured Jay would flip but he didn't, even when my dad started yelling at her for it being her fault for getting between them. He just walked out back to the tool shed and grabbed a claw hammer, came back in and just clocked our dad across the face with it."

"Holy shit," Connor said without meaning to.

"Holy shit is right. He nailed him hard enough to shatter his occipital lobe, break his nose, damage his sinus, and knock out all his top molars. My dad goes down, hard and my mom and I are just in shock. Neither of us could move. Jay flips our dad over and gets right in face and tell him, 'if you ever touch her again, I'll fucking kill you.' Then he went upstairs, packed his stuff and joined the Army.

"I didn't see him again for a year, after he went through all his training and schools and stuff. He came to Maryland before he was shipped to Afghanistan the first time.

"I had thought that it might be good for him, you know, to be in the Army, discipline and precision, and obsessive exercising, all those things he naturally enjoyed. And he did like them and he was very good at them. I don't remember the order of everything but he became a Ranger." Will gave a ironic smile.

"What does that entail? I remember Ethan mentioned that he looked like one."

"The Rangers are the premier light infantry unit of Special Operation Command." Will intoned in a mock drill sergeant's voice before returning to his normal one. "They are like these highly trained special forces guys that are the shock troops that get sent in at the beginning of any conflict or when they really want to win. They have to be trained and certified in airborne, infantry, assault, reconnaissance, medic stuff, and basically anything they need to be at any given time. Their official motto is, 'Rangers lead the way,' but according to Jay and his buddy Mouse the unofficial one is, 'fuck if I know but we'll figure it out.' They also hold the distinction of being the most deployed regiment in the military, have the longest deployments, and the most time in active combat. They are the most elite regiment in the entire US Military and only like a 15% acceptance rate. It's like the Army version of getting into Harvard."

"I would have thought that would be like the Navy SEAL or Delta Force or something?"

"Those guys are covert operations instead of combat troops like the Rangers. But I think those guys are like a full ride at Harvard maybe. I'm not sure, you could ask Dr. Choi or Jay, if he gets back," Will said, barely containing his emotion.

"Hey," he said forcefully. "When, not if, when, he gets back, I will ask him."

Will seemed to pull himself together. "When," he gave a very forced smile. "If the sex industry runs off of women with daddy issues then the Military is fueled by men with daddy issues. But the Rangers are basically where angry adrenaline junkies go to die, which was perfect for my little brother. And not only did he become a Ranger but he decided to take the risk taking insanity to a whole other level by becoming a sniper."

"A sniper?"

"Yeah, he was apparently a good shot, actually he always has been. Even when we were kids and our grandfather would take us hunting, he could take down the deer with one shot."

"What about you?" Rhodes asked. He had never been hunting.

"God no, I can't hit the broad side of a barn and I never wanted to kill them. I didn't understand the point of it, if you could just go to the store and buy food, though the herd did need to be thinned. I always shot around them to scare them away," Will said. And though Rhodes didn't know it at the time but that right there was the difference between the two brothers in a nutshell. Will would do anything to preserve a life, while Jay had an almost mechanical ability to kill if it meant others could survive.

"But yeah, precision shooting was like tailor made for Jay. It involves tons of discipline, practice, and a black and white criteria for success. The downside is that my brother was basically a government funded serial killer. And you would think that was the worst part of it, but no, snipers work in a pair, a spotter and a shooter. They spend a bunch of time away from the rest of the team and behind enemy lines. They only carry their big riffle and a handgun and when they are waiting for their shot, they are pretty much helpless, because they have a long ass gun that is screwed into a specific position and are concentrating through a scope instead of paying attention to what is going on around them. Jay has described text book concentrating to the point of depersonalization, when waiting to shoot. Because of that they have to rely solely on their spotters to keep them alive. It is one of the most dangerous specialties to have."

"That must have been hard, worrying about him while he was overseas."

"Yes but after a while you get used to the low level anxiety you feel everytime he leaves the house to go fight a war, or get shot at on the streets of Chicago, or join SWAT, or Intelligence. It's all good." Will said with a sad attempt at humor that gave away far more than he probably intended. He could only imagine how exhausting it must be to love someone that seemed to have no care for their own survival.

"I just thought after he got back, it would get better, he would learn to stop taking such stupid risks, but, he always thinks the reward is worth it." Will clenched his fist.

"Jay's spotter and BFF is a guy called Mouse. His real name is Greg but everyone, even his family calls him Mouse. He and Jay met in Basic training and have been inseparable ever since. He acted as Jay's spotter during both of his tours. Month 15 of their second tour they were both wounded, like bad. Neither have ever told me exactly what happened and the Army wouldn't tell us. Everything we asked, we were told was, 'classified.'" Will made air quotes around the last word. "Most of what I know about it is from randomly meeting one of the Air Cavalry medics that rescued them.

"I still remember the tears in my mothers voice when she called to tell me he was MIA. I never saw or heard my mother cry, not once. Not when she was sick, or our father was being horrible, or when her own mother died, but she was then. It was the worst fucking phone call I have ever had in my life. Worse than hearing my mom had stage 4 cancer and worse than hearing about her death.

"They were missing for 7 days. Seven fucking days of not knowing if I would ever get to see him, joke with him, hear him chuckle, get in arguments about the White Socks, ever again. I was so worried, I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I was physically ill, multiple times a day, just thinking about it. I had to skip work and I ended up fainting during rounds from dehydration," he admitted, clearly embarrassed by it. Connor was frankly more impressed that he even showed up.

"I know this sounds horrid, but in a way, it would have been easier to hear that he was dead, then being in that limbo. I have never been so scared in my entire life." Connor was at a loss as to what to say. He understood now why Will was so freaked out. It wasn't just that his little brother was missing but that he was associating it with the trauma of when he was missing before. He almost joked that if Jay kept getting lost, maybe they needed to put a bell on him. He managed to stop himself though.

"I got sent home after I passed out and I finally managed to fall asleep. My phone woke me up and it was my mom calling. I was so sure she was going to tell me he was dead or they had given up trying to get him back and we would never know. But she said that he was alive and he and Mouse were on their way back to the states. I couldn't process it, if that makes sense. I should have felt elated, my little brother was alive and he was coming home, but I was mad. I was so angry that he made me go through that. That because of him I got in trouble during rounds, and I was behind in studying, and I embarrassed myself by taking a header in front of everyone. I was so incredibly pissed at him I just wanted to scream at him and shake him for upending my life and for scaring me so badly.

"Anyway, all I know is that the car they were riding in drove over a landmine and Mouse's legs got trapped. He broke pretty much every bone below his knees. And Jay caught a whole bunch of shrapnel, like 60 something pieces of it, and at least 20 are still embedded in his arm and shoulder, mostly in the bone. If he ever comes into the ED, do not put him in an MRI machine," Will attempted a weak joke. It was good advice though.

"Mouse had to do a 4 inch fasciotomy in the field on him, with no anesthetic to maintain circulation to his hand because he arm had swelled so much. He has this gnarly scar across his neck, he got that then when a piece of the car's gas tank, I think, embedded in his neck. It somehow managed to miss his superior vena cava, internal jugular, aorta, innomiate artery, or his vagus nerve, even though he ripped it out in the field. It did cut into his windpipe though. He also got hit in the side and it sliced through part of his small intestines. Not sure why or how but they were alone out there for like 7 days and the entire time he was leaking gut bacteria into his blood and inhaling it and diesel and god knows what else directly into his lungs.

"Mouse was injured worse at the time but when they got them to a hospital, Jay had chemical pneumonitis, peritonitis, and was working on being septic. He also had an infection in the muscle and bone of his arm. He apparently had maggots in his chest and abdominal wounds. He had to have a triple fasciotomy, one on his chest, one from armpit to elbow, then one from elbow wrist in order to keep circulation to his hand. It was a mess, he had to have multiple surgeries and a skin graft to close it. Anyway, they got them stabilized and sent them back to the US. Jay was in and out the first week so was Mouse. They had to put them in the same room because everytime one woke up and couldn't find the other they would freak out. Jay still has the scars on his arms where he used his teeth to rip his IVs out, because he couldn't use his left arm. They were, are," Will corrected, "very much the other's emotional support animal.

"But when Jay was coherent enough, he called me to see if I could come visit him. I was in my 4th year of med school and I told him I was really busy and had a test on Friday, because I did, but I would come after. He was fine with that. He didn't complain, but Friday came and my test was done and passed and I didn't go. I went out and celebrated with my classmates instead. He knew our parents couldn't come. Our mom was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer by that point, it was in her lungs, ovaries, lymph nodes, and our dad had to work and take care of her. But Jay thought I would come. And even if she hadn't been sick, they couldn't have afforded to take off work, fly out there, and stay in a hotel in Washington. He got that, He understood, even if it must of been hard to be there mostly alone. Maybe he didn't get it so much with me." Will looked down.

"I don't know why I didn't go. I don't know if I was still resentful over how much he scared me or maybe just subconsciously pulling away because I was afraid to lose him. Or maybe I knew I couldn't handle seeing him injured because if it were as bad as it seemed, I wouldn't be able to just ignore it, once I had seen it. It was like between school, and work, and trying to maintain the facade of not being a poor Irish guy, I didn't have the mental energy to spend on him. I knew if I tried, I would unravel and everything would fall apart. I know that sounds awful and selfish and maybe I was then. But at the time I just, I didn't think I could handle it. I knew I couldn't," Will clenched his fists on the table lightly. A blatant tell of how he was feeling. Connor understood. Self care and understanding your limits is an important part of being a doctor, otherwise the job will eat up all of your energy.

"He called a few more times and basically went from asking to begging me to come and I always had some excuse, you know. Sometimes I had work or school or something but sometimes I didn't. I tried once or twice, when the guilt got to me. I got in my car and just could never do it. I felt like I was going to puke even thinking about going to see him."

"He was there, at Walter Reed, for 9 weeks I think and stuck around another 2 till Mouse could travel. I was less than an hour away at Hopkins and I never visited. I never drove that fucking hour to show him that I cared and so he wouldn't be alone. At the time, he was struggling, he was drowning and I just let him. I didn't do shit to help him, not even just being there, being present.

"I was so afraid of losing focus on school or having my image crack and people finding out I was poor mick from Canaryville that I let him twist in the wind and think no one loved him enough to show up. I let him go through multiple surgeries, bad ones to dig shrapnel out of bones and out of his chest muscles, alone. I let him wake up with nothing but nurses and doctors there to tell him he was going to be ok. I left the heavy emotional lifting of taking care of him to other people, the staff, Mouse's family, who should have been concentrating on Mouse. And to Mouse himself, even though he was worse off than Jay. All because I was too hyper focused on what I wanted, what I wanted to become, my goals." The amount of guilt in his voice and posture was hard for Connor to watch.

"Fuck, Mouse's 80 something year old holocaust survivor grandmother traveled from Chicago to see them and took better care of my brother than I did." Will hung his head in a defeated way. Connor could completely understand why Will felt guilty. Ghosting your little brother while he was laid up in critical condition was kind of an awful thing to do. But on the flip side, he understood why Will hadn't wanted to get distracted by anything in his last year of school. Because by then you worked 7 years, 11 if you count high school, to get there and it is so close and all that stands between you and being a doctor are a few tests. In a way it wasn't selfish at all for him to concentrate on his ambition, after all the work he had put into it. Any slip might have meant failure and wasting all that time and for him money.

"It is understandable. You can't succeed at med school if you have anything else going on in your life. It has to be your only focus, especially at a place like Hopkins where you are competing against the best of the best." It had probably been a lot easier for him. He went to a good, but not great school in Mexico and he had had the advantage of the best prep schools and tutors his entire life. Halstead would have been going in from some criminal infested school, South Side school. At least he assumed so. He actually had no idea where he had gone to high school but Connor could guarantee that his was probably better.

"But is it though? I kept telling him I would come and I kept flaking on him. Every fucking time. I just," Will stopped, like he wasn't sure what to say next.

"The last night he called me, it was at like 11:30 at night. I didn't answer so he left me a message and he sounded horrible. Like you know when you can tell something is really wrong with someone just by the way they're talking" Connor nodded. "That was how he sounded. He asked if I would please come see him. I could literally hear the tears he was trying to hold back while he was talking. I remember thinking, fuck Mouse must have died. And I didn't know how to handle the wreck he would be if that happened. They are like The Lone Ranger and Tanto or Jay and Silent Bob," he snorted, "Though, Jay is the quiet and of their pair. But basically the definition of hetero life mates. They are 10 times closer than Jay and I ever were. Losing Mouse would have killed him. I think he would have lost his will to live, if Mouse were gone." He paused for a minute, sipping his coffee. The shaking had stopped but Rhodes didn't think he was really calm yet. He could tell Will needed to keep talking, even though he had already explained why he was freaked out. He suspected no one had bothered to ever ask Halstead about this kind of stuff.

"And if Mouse were dead that meant his family would leave and then Jay would be completely alone. Plus, it was my one night a week off and I was out at a bar when he called, chatting up this really gorgeous 1 st year. I had had a shitty week and I just wanted to forget and do mindless shit. I got her back to my apartment and Jay called again at 3 am or so and I answered it because I was half asleep," he huffed. "If I had been awake, I would have let it go to voicemail. I could hear the tears and panic in his voice and he was barely making any sense, he just kept begging me to come and see him. He kept saying he needed me to come and he needed my help. I had no idea what he thought I could do but I told him to calm down, actually I told him to nut up and I would 100% be there after I got some sleep. Well I blew him off and spent the day with the 1st year. I couldn't tell you what her name was now but I can tell you Jay hasn't asked me for help with anything since then." He laughed with little humor.

"I told my brother, the toughest person I have ever met and probably will ever meet. A guy that literally snaps his own bones back into place so he can keep going, can run 30 miles carrying 70 pounds of gear, had spent 31 months in a combat zone, and had roughly 30" of muscle hanging out of his arm to nut up when he asked me for help." He shook his head. That was kind of cold.

"He never called me again, while he was there. Mouse did, the next day and was furious at me for not coming. He called me every name in the book and I hung up on him. But Jay, I didn't even know when he was discharged until my mom told me.

"The only time I saw him was when he came to my graduation. I remember being annoyed that everyone else was in nice suits and he was in his dress greens and his boots were scuffed. Everyone else wears shoes with their dress uniforms but paratroopers wear jump boots with their pants tucked in and he hadn't been able to get shoe polish or do a good job of cleaning them because he had had surgery on his chest the day before. I thought it made him look sloppy and second hand. A friend of mine made some nasty comment about them being dirty and I let him and didn't stick up for Jay. I fucking snarked at him about not wanting to go to dinner or out to a bar. I was horrible to him after he had left the hospital, against doctor's orders, He had had to bribe an orderly to help him get dressed and get him a cab. And all this a day after they had reattached chest muscles to each other and sat outside in the fucking heat for four hours in that heavy ass uniform made of this horrible polyester stuff that doesn't breath at all, scuffed leather boots, and wool beret, to watch me walk. When he took his jacket off, you could see the three inch by 10" open wound weeping on his upper arm and I was thinking about his boots." Will said, looking down. Connor wasn't sure what to say to that. It was tough to spin that to not make Will look like an asshole.

"Eventually he went back to Chicago. They had closed up his forearm and his chest, but he still had a 6" open spot on his upper arm and could apparently barely use it. He only had like 40% of his grip strength when he got home but he didn't worry too much about it because our mom was terminal by then and Mouse, he couldn't walk yet and he needed something like 9 or 11 more surgeries to fix his legs. Jay, he took care of them, both of them, even though he still needed at least two more surgeries on his arm. He took my mom to chemo and one time he dropped our mom off at the hospital for treatment, went over to the VA and had a revision surgery on the scar on his chest to increase range of motion, and came out of sedation, took the bus over to the hospital our mom was at and drove her home while he was still fucking half out of it from the anasthetic. My mom didn't know what was wrong with him and made him pull over and have our dad come pick them up in his cab. She was pissed when she found out." He smiled.

"Mouse needed a ton of physical therapy and Jay stayed with both of them for surgeries and everything else but he never complained. He just went from soldier back to caretaker and he just swallowed everything. We didn't really talk a lot around that time but according to my dad he was doing OK. He said he maybe had a little insomnia but it was no big deal. Turned out his little insomnia was only sleeping one out of three days but whatever. And that he had, according to my dad, gone stupid because he said he would stare at things and not seem to know how to use them, which I chalked up to my dad just being critical of him.

"Dad said he seemed OK so I accepted that he was OK without ever really checking myself. I talked to him maybe three times those first 5 months he was back in Chicago. By that point I was in my residency and you remember how that is. You're overworked, exhausted, and feel like a complete idiot that doesn't know anything but I was treating people like him. Vets that had been blown to pieces both physically and mentally. And there wasn't any place for them to go to get help. We just gave them anti anxiety drugs and kicked them and told them to follow up at the VA. I remember one guy came in and told me he had waited for 41 hours at the VA and never got to see a doctor and he just wanted help with pain in his amputation site. Others were worse off, ODs, one guy stepped in front of a car because he couldn't take the noise of the city anymore. And I couldn't see my little brother that way, because if he were that way, I would need to be there and I wasn't there so it must be fine. I just lived under the assumption that he was doing just great because anything else would have been too much to deal with. I wasn't strong enough to deal with anything else.

"But when my mom died, he took care of everything, the funeral, the wake, the paperwork. I think he even took care of our dad, which is surprising in and of itself because they still pretty much hate each other. And I, I never came home. I never helped, I never even asked how he was. I just kept on with my residency and my life and didn't worry about him. Because I was a doctor now and I was better than them." Will said bitterly. Will didn't seem like that sort of person to him. He was maybe a little intellectually elitist but he didn't seem like a snob at all.

"After, it was like a switch flipped with him and he just, I don't know, piece by piece fell apart. He quit sleeping, at all. He ran all the time. I mean he always liked to run and dad and I just figured he was trying to build back up his stamina after being so sick but it was ridiculous. He ran like 20 miles every day for weeks. He gave himself stress fractures in his feet and didn't care. In fact, I don't even know if he noticed.

"He was still paid by the Army but out on disability so he didn't have to work, though he tried a few times and would like, be too scared to get in the car or walk across the parking lot but it never bothered him when he had to take Mouse to appointments or anything like that. If he had something to concentrate on, he was fine. If he was going he was fine but as soon as he slowed down, or stopped, he was a mess.

"He was freaking my dad out so much that I finally agreed to come home for Christmas. I assumed Dad was overreacting and Jay was just being more disciplined than he was used to but nope. He was right. Jay was a wreck. He didn't sit still, he checked doors, windows, upstairs, downstairs, the yard like 10 or 12 times an hour. It was crazy. He wouldn't calm down, no matter how much both of us tried to get him to, cajoled, tried to distract him, or just flat out yelled at him. Sometimes when he would sit down, he would be vibrating, like honest to god trembling. I know hypervigilance is physiological, but knowing that doesn't make it any easier to watch. The only time he was ever calm or still was when he was at the gun range. At the time I didn't recognize it for what it was, PTSD, because I thought the timing was wrong because he had been alright for a couple months. Or rather he had been living with an acute combat stress reaction for months that finally turned into full blown PTSD. I didn't catch that his calmness, how pulled together he was, was actually blunted affect. Or that his going stupid was his brain being so exhausted and flooded with stress hormones that he had trouble prioritizing tasks.

"Someone," Will paused. "Someone should have realized it. Someone should have helped. My dad should have caught it. One of his fucking VA doctors that just tried to get him out of the room as fast as they could should have noticed. Mouse should have figured it out. I, I should have known. But I didn't. I thought he was on drugs or something. And he was, sometimes but he thought self medicating was his only choice."

"I can't imagine your straight laced looking brother being on drugs," Conner threw in. The guy looked like a ginger version of Captain America.

Will chuckled. "You would think that but he used to be a complete pot-head in high school and he did take drugs when he got back. He wasn't an addict like Mouse, who developed a pretty bad opioid addiction, but I know he did use stuff to even him out. And I'm sure he took things to help him stay awake."

"The pacing was probably the worst. I can't explain to you how annoying that pacing was. He still does it, sometimes after a bad case or for some reason I don't know and he won't tell me, he will just pace around like a fucking caged predator. It doesn't get any easier to deal with, though at least he doesn't vibrate anymore."

"But back then he didn't ever want to sleep. Even when he was clearly exhausted, he would fight falling asleep. It was like a weird compulsion and he thought something horrible was going to happen if he fell asleep. He didn't ever want to go get help. I made him, once, go and get some anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills, but he wouldn't take them. He never even filled the prescriptions, so I went to a clinic and got some sleeping pills, Ambian, and ground them up in his food, because he used to eat it so fast he wouldn't taste them. I hoped they would knock him out so he could get a good night's sleep and hopefully, I don't know, calm down. But it was a nightmare. He ended up taking a rifle and locking himself in the attic for 7 hours talking to things that weren't there. And yeah, in hindsight I realize giving a highly trained killer that was struggling with derealization a drug with a 30% chance causing hallucinations was not the smartest thing I could have done but I was desperate. I just kept hoping that a few good nights of rest would snap him out of it.

"My dad did get rid of every gun in the house after that. He used to have two hunting rifles and a handgun but they all ended up somewhere else after that. None of us wanted to be in the house with Jay and a gun when he was like that. And I know that sounds awful, but we were both a little afraid of him.

"Neither my dad nor me knew what to do. Looking back on it, he needed to be in hospital , where he could be monitored and medicated and get therapy because he was the definition of a danger to himself and others but at the time we just kept thinking he would get better on his own. You know, Jay's tough, he will bounce back. Shit like PTSD happened to other people, weak people, and Halsteads aren't weak. That attitude, it probably made it so much harder for him. Even when he tried to ask for help my dad and I just kept telling him it wasn't really that bad. He just needed to try harder. And we missed his subtle requests for help, like one time he asked if I wanted to play a board game of all things. I told him no and went out with some of my friends because I was fed up with him and my dad and needed to destress. Looking back on it, I think he just wanted company and something to concentrate on. We must have made him feel like he was crazy, wrong, or worse a pansy for feeling the way he did and that he should just be able to grit his teeth and get over it. He tried, I know he did but. It makes me sick to think about it now.

"It all came to a head one night. Jay hadn't slept in like 3 days, even after I tried to drug him with xanax and he was pacing and pacing and pacing and he could tell he was driving me and my dad up a wall so he went outside for a walk. He tended to do that, go out at night and walk outside. There is this mile and half circle around the neighborhood. Jay used to run it as a kid all the time, and he would just walk it all night. I mean he would go out at like 9 or 10 at night and just walk till dawn. I am sure people thought he was casing the neighborhood. Then he would come back, eat, then go out and run for like six hours. Then spend the rest of the day jittering and checking the house and yard." Will pulled the corner of his mouth up slightly then continued. "I don't know how his central nervous system didn't explode." Connor chuckled too. "Though given some of his adrenaline junky ways, I am pretty sure it is permanently fried."

"Anyway this one night my dad was a little drunk and frustrated with him and I was sober and not much better and Jay went out to pace around outside. My dad and I argued about having an intervention for him. Because he needed help. He need medication and therapy, and to sit the fuck still for more than 45 seconds. So I am trying to convince my dad that we need to just get a court order and get him committed before he hurts someone and my dad is being my dad and telling me I don't know what I'm talking about and Jay was tough and he'll be fine, when we see flashing lights outside. I look out and see two cops coming up on Jay and I open the door and run out, my dad right behind me. Before I can even try and deescalate the situation, one of the cops moved on Jay and he did something, I'm not even sure what but one second the guy is walking towards him and the next he has him on the ground and Jay has his gun pointed at the other guy.

"I started screaming not to shoot," Will scrubbed his hands over his face. "I honestly couldn't tell you if I was telling the cops not to shoot or Jay," he admitted. "But Jay heard me and my dad coming up behind him and he whipped around and pointed that gun at me. It kills me to admit this but in that second, in that moment, I can't guarantee he wouldn't have pulled the trigger." That hung in the air for a moment. Connor and his sister had their static but not like this. He had never been afraid of her or what she would do to him. Not once.

"It was terrifying, to look into my baby brother's face and not see him. But I also know that up here, " Will tapped his temple. "He wasn't in Chicago at 11 o'clock at night. He was over there, in Afghanistan fighting for his and Mouse's lives."

"God, that is horrible," Connor said, trying to imagine what that would be like. To watch someone you love go through something like that. It must have been heartbreaking.

"The older cop, the training cop, he put his gun away and talked to Jay like he was his sergeant or something, kept calling soldier and telling him to stand down. He had this really calm, quiet voice. I don't know why but it seemed to work and Jay dropped the gun and let the younger guy up. I don't know what guardian angel was looking out for him but the cop just let him go and told us to take care of him.

"We took him inside and sat him down in the kitchen. I remember he was shaking like a leaf."

"It's a side effect of excess adrenaline," Connor clarified.

"I know," Will said someone sarcastically. Yeah of course Mr. John Hopkins knew that and he was kind of dumb for pointing it out.

"Sorry," Connor conceded because this wasn't about their normal pissing match.

"He was shaking and chewing on his thumbnail. He chewed it till he actually chewed all the skin off the inside of thumb. But my dad just laid into him calling him all sorts things telling him he needed to man up and snap out of it. Basically all the wrong things to do at the time and Jay just sat there chewing on his thumb and staring at the salt shaker, bouncing his leg. He was completely derealized. It was always, is always his worst symptom, disassociation. He still does it. You can tell, if you know him well enough." Will said sadly.

"Our dad finally got fed up and left and Jay got up and started pacing again. I wanted to strangle him because that kitchen is like 5 steps tops and he kept going back and forth, back and forth. I realize now, he physiologically couldn't help it. His body was going completely haywire and he was stuck in fight or flight but at the time," Will huffed.

"It can be really hard to deal with a family member with mental illness, really draining," Connor said, hoping not to give too much away. He remembered well the emotional toll his mother's depression had on his family.

"It really is and there is no manual on how to handle it, which is why I stupidly stood up and grabbed him by the arms," Will held his hands out like he was going to grip someone by each arm and shake them. "And he reacted before he even realized it was me. He broke my grip, punched me in the throat, and then slammed my face into the refrigerator behind him. And this isn't a normal fridge, this is like a 800 pound 1970s Whirlpool that hasn't moved since my parents got married." Connor felt his eyes go wide. The way Will was describing his brother, he kind of didn't like the fact he was on the streets and highly armed.

"He broke all the bones around my eye, shattered my nose, bruised my larynx and subglotis."

"Jesus, that sounds horrible," That was what you saw with car accidents, not two brothers fighting with each other.

"Not my brightest move. And if my brother ever jokes with you that he is going to break your face, trust him because he can actually do it. But needless to say I went down, screaming. My dad came in and started screaming. Jay just curled up on the ground repeating how sorry he was. He was crying," Will sounded choked up remembering it. "I hadn't seen my little brother cry since he was 5 years old and we watched All Dogs Go to Heaven. It gutted me to see it. Anyway, my dad kept yelling at him. Calling him dangerous, broken, crazy, and damaged. Jay just cried harder and apologized more. I know the term isn't clinical but I would lay odds he was having a complete nervous breakdown. I wanted to say something but couldn't. My dad finally told him that he was taking me to hospital and that Jay need to pack his shit because he had two choices, he could check himself into a hospital and get help or he could get the fuck out and never come back."

"That is pretty harsh but it seems like it worked and he got help. I mean, if you hadn't told me all of this, I would never have thought your brother had any problems."

Will snorted and again smiled. "Actually he hitchhiked to our grandfather's hunting cabin in the woods of Wisconsin and didn't talk to anyone but Mouse for 4 months. I also don't think he has set foot inside our dad's house since then and they haven't talk to each other in 2 years. I also don't think he has really ever forgiven our dad for turning his back on him during the lowest point in his life."

"Oh, sorry." That had not been the answer he was expecting.

"Dad realized after a day or two he had fucked up but none of us, even Mouse knew where Jay went. We called hospitals and morgues and he even filled out a missing person report but cops don't look for adult men that don't want to talk to their fathers. Mouse was a complete wreck and came over, walker and all, and got the cops called on him for screaming at our dad for kicking Jay out like that. Luckily, he called Mouse after a week or so and told him where he was and Mouse waited another week and told us. But he wouldn't talk to me or Dad.

"Dad called me a few times while Jay was up there. He had tried to go and see him but he said Jay was a mess, not eating, not sleeping, weapons everywhere. Nothing Dad said to him made a difference. He tried to get me to come home to see if he would listen to me but I didn't. I stayed in New York, even though the Chief Resident heard me talking and said I could go because your highly trained brother surrounding himself with guns and having a potentially psychotic break was a good enough reason to miss a few rounds. But, I just, I couldn't handle seeing him like that. Having conversations with him where it was clear he wasn't actually there, not mentally anyway. Seeing him suffer like that. I just, I couldn't stand not being able to help him, him not letting me help him, not trusting me enough to help.

"And if I am 100% honest, I was a little afraid. I mean, I know he was out of it, and I should never have grabbed him but he broke bones, badly enough that I had to have surgery on them. It was tough to trust getting too close to him for a while. Needless to say that to this day he still always wins 'made you flinch'." Will gave a sad smile trying to make light of the fact his family appeared to be riddled with domestic abuse.

"So I stayed in New York and talked about my soldier brother and used it to get dates and pretend that he was just fine. And he hasn't treated me as anything more than an acquaintance since," Will said bitterly. "I haven't," he said, wiping a tear away from his eye, "I haven't figured out how to make it up to him yet. I can't lose him without having a chance to let him know how sorry I am."

"In the end, Mouse managed to get him to come home. None of us have ever been able to talk him into actually getting any substantive help, but he seemed to pull himself back together. I talked to a psychiatrist at Sloan about him and according to her he needed decompression time and was denied that by going from the traumatic event, to the stress of physical healing where he was separated from a strong support system, to immediately being a caretaker. Everything was so urgent he didn't have time to actually deal with anything but the life or death things in front of him. Then when he did have time, he kind of got overwhelmed. But the quiet and solitude of the cabin did wonders for him.

He and Mouse moved in together and Jay eventually joined the Police. Dad was livid about it. Jay always thought it was because Dad didn't like cops or wasn't proud or still saw him as damaged goods. But it was because Dad was scared of what it would do to him, mentally.

"And yeah, he has gotten a lot better but there are still things there, quirks people call them but I know what they are and where they came from. He is reckless as hell. Other people just call him impulsive and it isn't true. Because when you are impulsive you do shit without thinking. He thinks it through and always decides that the risk is worth it, no matter what the hell the risk is. Not to be too dramatic but it borders on death seeking behavior or if not death seeking than a decided lack of concern for his physical wellbeing, which is no doubt what ended him up where he is now," Will's voice cracked as it was obvious he was trying to fight back tears.

"I am sure the police will find him, Will, just don't give up hope." Will nodded and asked him to take him to a church.

Will spent the next 24 or so hours praying more than he had prayed in years, crying, and debating calling his father to let him know. Part of him just thought the man deserved to know. He was their father, Jay was his son, he should know. And Will wouldn't mind having some company in his bowel shaking terror of losing his brother now that they had finally reconnected. He didn't though, also understanding Jay's logic of not telling him anything, or frankly even communicating with him at all, because he had a bad valve in his heart and didn't need the stress. At least that had always been what Will had assumed. It could also just be that Jay did actually hate him. He was never quite sure.

Connor had actually been pretty cool and had called him a few times to check on him and make sure he was doing alright. He would have never credited the man with that much heart but he was the only person from work that had bothered to check on him when he had left mid shift yesterday and had called in sick today. Normally work might have distracted him but he also knew he was in shape to treat patients right now.

After a sleepless night, he had managed to doze off around 8 am and was woken by his phone ringing around 1pm. It was Voight. As if being startled awake wasn't jarring and frightening enough, now he had to find out his brother's fate.

His hands shook as he answered the phone, "Hello," he said, feeling bile rise in his throat. He had been too spun to eat and hadn't actually done so since he had been out with Connor.

"Will, it's Voight. We found him. He's at med right now. He's ok." Will wanted to say something but he couldn't. He felt like there was a giant block of cheese lodged in his throat. Jay was OK, Jay was alive, Jay was safe. Those thoughts just kept swirling around his head. "Did you hear me?" Voight said when he didn't answer.

"Mm-hmm," was all he managed to eek out.

"Good," Voight said, then hung up. Will put his head in his hands and cried. When he was done, he got dressed and headed to Med just in time to hear a conversation about if Jay needed surgery. He inserted himself into it and agreed with Ethan. Jay should have his rib pinned to prevent it from moving during healing. But his brother, being his brother and didn't want it. He should probably just take care of that before Jay got back from imagining and a fight could start.

"Ms Goodwin, Jay has a head wound. He might not be competent to make this decision himself," Will turned to the woman and said.

"He seemed pretty clear about it," Dr. Choi said, hugging the iPad to his chest.

"I know my brother, he is not going to want to risk a rib damaging his lungs," Will stated, when he heard Mouse chime in.

"You don't know shit and Jay already said no."

"Mouse we were just discussing that Jay may not be in a state to make these sort of important decisions for himself."

"He's fine and even if he weren't the choice wouldn't be yours,"

"He wouldn't want our father making it and even if he did, he would follow my lead," Will explained, not even wanting to think about their dad trying to make this type of decision.

"No surgery," Mouse said, standing square.

"Mouse, I know you think you need to take his side," Will started, when Ms Goodwin interrupted.

"Dr. Halstead, Mr. Gerwitz has your brother's medical power of attorney," she said almost apologetically. Will felt like he had been kicked in the fucking gut.

"What?"

"You heard the woman. If Jay can't make his own decisions, he wants me to make them for him and I chose to let him decide."

"No, you can't. We can't trust this guy, he's drug addict," Will said, grasping at any straw he could. He couldn't believe that Jay would trust Mouse over him. "We don't even know if he is clean."

"What do you want, blood, piss, or hair," Mouse said glaring at him. "It must kill you, that even knowing I used to be on drugs that Jay still trusts me more than he trusts you," Mouse snarled at him.

"This is not happening," he got in Mouse's face, hurt worse than he had been in a long time by the entire thing.

"You need to back the fuck up, Will." Mouse said, his hands on his hips and his voice tense. Sometimes he had a hard time remembering that this puny guy had served beside Jay for two tours but at this moment he looked every ounce the Ranger his brother did.

"It's Dr. Halstead," Will snapped because for all that he was smarter than Jay, they both shared the same low class obsession with titles to help them feel like they were equals to the rich people around them and the same stupid, self destructive temper.

"Not to me it isn't," Mouse said, narrowing his eyes. "To me, you're just the useless sack of shit that happens to be related to Jay and calls himself his brother, when it's convenient."

Will could see the other doctor's looking uncomfortable at Mouse's attitude. Well it was probably about to get worse. "You're view aside. I am his real brother and a doctor and I am better suited to make any type of medical decision that he needs and if Dr Rhodes and Dr. Choi think surgery is the better option than wait and see, then he is getting surgery"

"You really think you get to just waltz in after a fucking decade plus and make decisions for him? Especially ones that go against his wishes?"

"Jay is always twitchy about things like this, he is afraid of doctors, he will get over it."

Mouse looked like he was going to punch someone and Will thought for a second it was going to be him, but luckily the man forced himself to relax.

"You're right, he is twitchy about medical procedures, but did you ever bother to ask him why, oh great and wise Dr. Halstead?" Will wasn't sure what the point was of this conversation. It was like Mouse was fighting just to fight, which he might be. Jay had a tendency to do that when he was stressed out or mad. He would pick a fight just so he could beat someone up.

"No one likes having surgery, but it will be fine. It isn't complex and won't take more than an hour."

"I'll take that as a no, then. Maybe one day, you should ask him. He probably won't tell you so I will. You remember when we were at Walter Reed and he called you in the middle of the night, begging you to come and see him?" Will nodded because he did remember. That night kind of still haunted him. "You know why he wanted you to come and see him?" Will shook his head no, even though he assumed that Jay was injured and wanted company and support like a normal person.

"He had had surgery the day before, on lower abdomen, to remove scar tissue and an adhesion or something and during the surgery they had knocked a piece of shrapnel loose and it was migrating around his gut. During the surgery, he woke up."

"That's not possible, that only happens 1 in 250,000 times and even if he did wake up, he probably wasn't awake enough to feel anything." Will defended.

"He couldn't move when he woke up. He couldn't talk because they had something down his throat. He said it didn't hurt but he could feel them moving his guts around, hear the sounds of them squelching, smell his own blood, and he could tell you what the doctors and nurses talked about, what the guy that gave him the anesthesia said when he realized his eyes were open and he was awake."

"That's horrible," Will said, still not sure what him showing up would have done. But it did explain Jay's nervousness with medical procedures.

"See Jay's doctor, his name was Lieben, was convinced from the first week we were there that Jay was a drug addict."

"What, why would he think that?"

"Because the only time Jay wasn't in pain was when they gave him a narcotic because you know his left arm and chest fucking were a shredded mass of infection and meat hanging out like a split sausage that had gone through grinder. Same with his side, but yeah they thought some codeine was going to be enough and everytime he said it wasn't helping they told him it was and he just didn't realize it. Or that it was all in his head and he just needed to grit his teeth and deal with it. Or my personal favorite, "there are other people in here injured worse than you that are on less pain medication and what you are feeling is withdrawal not pain.

"When he woke up during surgery, it just made Lieben more sure he was on drugs because normal people don't wake up during surgery so afterwards all he gave him was two extra strength tylenol. He had a 7 inch incision and a 2 and half inch piece of twisted metal shredding through his intestines but yeah, tylenol is plenty for that."

"No, there is no way, that is against everything we are taught. A doctor wouldn't do that." Will said, his mind kind of short circuiting at the idea of his baby brother being treated like that.

"He tried to tell the doctor how much pain he was in and that bastard ignored him for two fucking days till that night I convinced him to call you. He didn't want to, he said you were too busy to worry about him. I think he was just scared of you doing exactly what you did. But I made him do it. After weeks of seeing him deal with chunks of muscle hanging out of his arm with nothing but Advil and two days of him fucking writhing in pain, I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't watch for one more minute Jay laying there with a white knuckle grip on bed rail, trying his damndest not to move or breath too hard. Watching the pain get so bad that he vomited all over himself twice and the nurses taking 45 minutes to come in and clean it up.

"He called you a second time, right after. I sat in a bed 6 feet away from him and listened to him literally beg you to come and you lied to him and said you would and never showed up. He fucking needed you, needed your help with the doctors and you couldn't even be bothered to drive an hour to do it. So yeah, Halstead, you have no goddamn right to make decisions for him.

"One because he is perfectly capable of doing it himself and two, he doesn't trust you to do it for him. So why don't you fuck all the way off and I'll stay here tonight and do what I have always done, and have his back." Mouse turned and left Will standing there feeling completely stunned. He couldn't even be bothered to care that his colleagues had heard that. He couldn't get past that a doctor would treat his brother that way. That all these years he had chalked Jay's reticence to get medical help up to being generically afraid of doctors and wanting to be macho, not that he had been traumatized while at his weakest point.

Fuck, no wonder Jay was so leery of him. He had let his brother down in ways he hadn't even realized. He turned and walked out. He needed to think, no scratch that, he needed a fucking drink.

Will probably drank way more than he should have last night but he had been in a horrible mood. Oh he acted happy and joked about Jay understanding the risks but in his head all he could hear was Mouse's description of his brother writhing in pain and begging for help and no one listening.

Even though he was royally hung over, he got up and headed to the hospital. He needed to talk to Jay. Of course when he got there he stood in the hall for longer than he should have because he had no idea what to say. He had done those things, he had left his brother there and not helped him but he had had his reasons and they were valid.

This wasn't the first time he had tried to have this type of conversation with Jay. He had tried a few times before. He had even apologized once but Jay didn't seem to accept it. He was too bitter and angry to forgive Will.

He stood there long enough that he didn't notice Mouse till he said his name. The other man was standing in front of him with the same clothes from yesterday, holding a fresh change of them for Jay. Will kind of wanted to run away from him before he got yelled at again, but he didn't. For once, he needed to man up and deal with this family shit, if he wanted to actually have a family that was. And Mouse was part of the family shit because Jay saw him as more of a brother than he did Will.

"Mouse," he squeaked then cleared his throat. "I actually wanted to talk to you." he raised an eyebrow telling Will to continue. "I want your advice," he said, not wanting to actually go any further and have to actually ask for help. He and Mouse hadn't ever really clicked with each other. Even if they didn't tend to fight over Jay's attention, he wouldn't have really liked the guy. He was just too weird and anxious and talked too much.

"Advice on?" Mouse asked because Will had paused for too long.

"On Jay, I mean on dealing with him," he stammered before finally deciding to come clean. "On fixing our relationship."

"Do I look like a relationship coach to you?"

"No, but you are his best friend."

"Exactly and I am not going to break any confidence for you." He crossed his arms.

"I'm not asking you to. I'm just asking for some guidance on how to get through to him. How to make him see that I am serious."

Mouse sighed and much of his confrontational body language disappeared. "You could try starting with an apology."

"I have apologized to him."

"No, you have said the phrase, 'I'm sorry,' but you haven't actually apologized because you always either precede it or end with some reason why Jay is overreacting, why he shouldn't actually be upset, or why you are in the right in the situation and he is actually wrong. Saying 'I'm sorry,' doesn't mean shit if you are just going to spend the rest of the conversation gaslighting him into thinking he should be the one apologizing to you."

"I don't do that, I just make sure he understands the facts of why I did something. How is he supposed to forgive me, if he thinks I did something just to be a dick? "

"You defend your actions to the point where you make him look unreasonable for being upset."

"I just don't want him to be mad," Will said.

"He isn't mad at you, Will, at least not for most of it. He's hurt. You fucking broke his heart when you didn't show and when you let your dad throw him out. That shit isn't going to fix easy or quick."

"I know," Will hung his head and turned around, deciding it might be better to talk to his brother after he thought some shit out. He managed to make it to the afternoon.

Will was starting to get pressed that no one had answered the door? What if something had happened and Jay had to take him back to the hospital and he was here and not there? What if Mouse had left him and he had passed out and injured himself worse? He wished he had a key but after he had gotten his own place, Jay took it back.

Just as he was about to call for the fire department to come and break the door down, it unlocked and opened to a rumpled and clearly annoyed looking Ranger. His face was swollen and discolored, and he was slightly hunched over as he moved. He was also trying to walk without putting pressure on the laceration on his feet. Will wasn't sure what he was expecting, but his brother still looked like absolute shit. His apartment behind him was also dark, his black out curtains were all closed and not a single light was on but that made sense. Jay had a concussion and lights might be making his head hurt.

"What do you want?" Jay groused at him as apparently he had taken too long standing in the doorway for his gripey brother. He and Mouse tended not to see eye to eye on a lot of things but one thing they both wholeheartedly agreed on was that Jay was a complete asshole when he didn't feel well. And it was best to avoid him when he was sick or injured if at all possible. It was in fact, normally the first sign that something was wrong with him, that he was really surly instead of just mildly snarky.

"I came to check on you, make sure you were alright," Will stammered, not really expecting Jay to be quite this hostel. Of course he didn't know that Voight, Olinsky, Burgess, and Dawson had all stopped by to check on him and he hadn't been able to get any sleep, which was adding to his generally foul mood.

"I'm fine, you can go," he said, moving to close the door, barely hiding a yawn.

"Wait," Will said, stopping the door from closing. "I wanted to talk to you."

Jay gave him a sour expression as he considered whether to shut the door anyway, but he relented and let Will in. He then shuffled over and gingerly sank onto the couch, pulling the blanket over onto himself. Typical of spring in Chicago, yesterday had been beautiful and in the 80s and today was windy, damp, and in the 30s. It didn't help that Jay's apartment was always drafty. But then again cops don't actually make that much and Chicago is an expensive city.

"Talk then," Jay said as Will took off his coat and sat down. He almost had to sit on his hands to stop himself from reaching out to palpate the swollen eye socket or to check and make sure the burns were clean and neatly dressed.

"Do you need me to check your bandages?" He asked, hoping his brother would give permission. He had only been able to steal a glance at Jay's chart before Dr. Choi closed it but Connor had been kind enough to access it and leave it open for him to read through the entire thing. He had hoped it would help his anxiety. It didn't.

"Don't touch me," Jay said, showing he wasn't in the mood for Will's mothering.

"Where is Mouse, I thought he was supposed to be staying with you?" He asked, only now realizing that Jay was alone. He was livid. His brother had a concussion, broken ribs, bruised lungs, bruised kidneys, broken fingers, and a host of other issues and Mouse had had the nerve to bail on him? This was unacceptable. How dare that pipsqueak lecture him about the way he treated Jay when he just walked out on him when his brother was badly hurt.

"I was taking a nap so he went to get food," Jay explained as he slouched down further so he was half way between sitting and laying with his knees bent to make room for Will, and his head resting against the back of the couch. He figured it would be more comfortable to stretch out but he didn't. He had figured out recently that Jay using you as a footrest was a quirky show of trust and affection from him. He used to do it to Will all the time when they were kids. He did it to Mouse constantly, stretching his legs out so they were in Mouse's lap or propping his feet up on the arm of his chair. He had even seen him do it with Erin but he hadn't done it with Will since he had left for University.

"He shouldn't be leaving you alone, especially when you are sleeping, you could," he started to lecture and Jay cut him off.

"He's been gone for 17 minutes," Jay snarked at him. "I think I can survive that long without someone hovering over me. Especially considering Dr. Choi said the most important thing was to rest and for once I am actually trying to follow doctors orders but the entire world is conspiring against me." Will pursed his lips, not wanting to admit his brother was right. "And I repeat, what the hell do you want?"

Jay's general mood was making Will rethink his plan of having this discussion with him right now. But he had driven over here, apparently woken him up, and was now in too deep to back out so pray for him. "I wanted to apologize," he said in a rush.

"For what?" Jay asked. Will noticed him using his stuffed otter to keep his arm from putting too much pressure on the burns or his broken ribs. That stupid stuffed otter. Jay usually kept it in his bed, which must be an odd conversation to have with his dates but he cherished that thing. It was a gift from Mouse's little sister, Rebecca. She had saved up for it and bought it for him for his birthday. She shared his weird fondness for otters or as Jay referred to them adorable, damp chaos weasels.

Jay also had closed his eyes. He was probably tired as shit. Being tortured for two day, then spending a night in a hospital was not particularly restful, especially for as light of a sleeper as Jay. Will swore if a fly farted on the window sill, it would wake his brother up.

"For not being here for you," Jay's eyes shot open to glare at him and he stiffened. "For leaving you alone with Mom and Dad when she was so sick and he was being a bastard and you were just a kid, so I could go to school and become a doctor. For when you got home and had to take care of her while you were still injured yourself, even though I was starting my residency and I couldn't really travel. For not helping you when you were having problems with PTSD because I was knee deep in my residency and then my Fellowship." The mention of the mental illness his brother refused to admit he had made him narrow his eyes.

"For not visiting you at Walter Reed, even though you didn't tell me why you wanted me there. For not," Will didn't know how to finish that statement. The night Mouse had described to him. He remembered it and he remembered that the chick he was with was more important to him than his brother. Had he known, had Jay or Mouse even remotely explained to him what was going on, he would have gone to him. He would have argued with the doctors, he would have fixed it. But Jay didn't, he just pretended like he was lonely and wanted a visitor. Of course the fact that his brother had nearly been blown sky high and was lonely should have been enough to get him to go, but it wasn't. It hadn't been enough to get him to concentrate beyond what he wanted and wanting to avoid the stress and trauma of nearly losing Jay.

In a way, it was funny that those 7 days Jay was missing had been the worst days of his life. He had barely been able to function. He had literally been physically ill with worry. He had cried more in those seven days than he had since he was seven years old. Even still when he thought of that fear, that worry, he felt like he couldn't breathe for fear of losing his baby brother, but as soon as he knew Jay was safe, he couldn't be bothered to do anything for him.

"I know," Will sighed. Admitting he was wrong was never something he had been any good at. He didn't have Jay's aggressive stubbornness but he had to cop to much of his sense of self was wrapped up in always being right. "I know you were hurt, that I wasn't able to be there and I wanted you to know that I am sorry that you were upset by it."

"What are you trying to accomplish with this little speech?" Jay asked him. His body language was far more closed and suspicious than it had been earlier. Will felt somewhat defeated.

"I wanted to say I am sorry. I wanted you to hear it."

"Why, why does it matter after all this time? Why now? Is this some kind of guilt thing because I caught the short end of the stick on a case and got knocked around?" Will kind of wanted to smack him for describing what he had gone through as, "the short end of the stick."

"No, maybe, I don't know. I just know that you are my little brother and I love you, and I almost lost you. And because I am back and I want us to be brothers again. Not just that we are related to each other but actual brothers that hang out and do things together."

"We haven't been like that since you went through puberty and you started bribing me peanut butter cups and extra video game time to not tell mom and dad when you snuck girls into the house." Jay pointed out and he wasn't wrong on either count. He wondered if peanut butter cups would work on Jay now. Four and half years is a lot of time when one party is 14 and the other party is nine. But it wasn't a lot now that they were adults. "And we don't have even remotely the same interests." Jay was also right about that. Will loved going to sporting events, trying new restaurants, listening to live music, going to museums, going to the movies, and generally just being social. The sum total of Jay's hobbies included running, training to beat people up, and shooting at things. He knew that was completely fair because he did hang out with Mouse and he had dated Erin but according to her most of their dates were an occasional drink at Molly's and dinner at home.

"Then we need to change that," Will tried. "I finally came home and now we can actually be like a family, like brothers, instead of only talking to each other once a month and an occasional email." Will tried again, not sure how to make Jay understand that he was trying to reach out and repair the mess that things had become. Of course later he would realize that even in this, he had been selfish because he had basically told Jay that Will wanted to be brothers now that it was on his time and his terms but when Jay had wanted it, Will was too busy.

When Will went back and played the conversation over in his head, he would realize that he was still doing all the things Mouse had yelled at him about. Still stating his excuses, still making Jay out to be wrong for being upset, and not really taking responsibility for anything. But at the here and now, it felt like he was debasing himself.

"I don't know what you want me to say. It isn't like you were doing something wacky and spilled my beer and now that you said sorry we can laugh about it like a Mentos commercial. What you did or didn't do," he paused, running his hand over his face. "That shit was road burn on my fucking soul."

"I know that is how it seems to you but have to understand I," he started, needing to make Jay see that he had had his reasons. It was exactly the opposite of what Mouse had told him to do and he also realized he was continuing to try and gaslight Jay about this by not acknowledging how much he had been hurt and trying to make it seem like he was overreacting or was somehow unreasonable or worse, at fault for what Will had done.

He could see the small amount of openness his brother had evaporated and he hated it. "I am sorry. What can I do?"

"I don't know. Just give me some time, please. We can talk about it later when I am not operating on less than 4 hours of sleep in four days and don't a traumatic brain injury." He said, ending in a yawn.

"You should go back to bed and get some sleep." He rose to leave and Jay sank down to lie on the couch, still hugging that stupid stuffed otter. He used to sleep like that, when he was a little, little kid, with his stuffed Mcgruff the Crime Dog he had gotten at some neighborhood fair. It had been his favorite night time stuffy, not because it was a cop but because he liked droopy hound dogs. It was weird that Will could see him still as the 4 year old boy that was always running as fast as he could to keep up with Will and the indomitable warrior he had become. What must this shit be like for parents?

"I will," he said, flipping slightly on the couch, instead of getting up to go to bed. Will went to leave but was stopped by Jay's voice. "I do love you, Will, even with all the shit between us, you're still my big brother but I need you to show me that you aren't going to rabbit on me the second things get hard." That was far more than Will had been expecting. It wasn't the absolution he had hoped for but it was hope that what was broken could be repaired and it made him smile and feel tears in his eyes at the same time.

"I won't do that to you again, I promise. Now get some rest. I'll check on you tomorrow."

"Don't," Jay called, sounding half asleep already.

Jay fidgeted, trying to get comfortable and offset the queasiness from his concussion. It was his first, which was surprising given all of his various injuries and though it was mild, the low level of nausea the constant pounding caused if he was sitting, standing or tried to visually concentrate on anything kind of sucked. It especially sucked because his sleep pattern was now fucked and it was 10pm and he was wide awake because he had only woke up 2 hours ago.

On the plus side Mouse had made him grits for dinner, which was nice since he referred to them as slightly wheaty tasting sand porridge. Jay liked them though, he had developed a taste for them, when they were stationed in Georgia. Even though it was horribly hot sometimes, he kind of liked Georgia, it was pretty, the people were way friendlier than in Chicago but also really good at minding their own business, and he got to try things like shrimp and grits and chicken and waffles and they were delicious. Erin still didn't believe him that they were actually excellent combinations.

Mouse nudged the arm he had over his eyes and handed him an ice pack for his face or maybe his ribs or his burns, or his feet, who fucking knew. Everything south of his hairline hurt. He opted for his face since it required the least amount of movement and would give him something to concentrate instead of the "am I going to puke or not game,"

"Will stopped by, while you were out," she said. Talking hurt but boredom overrode pain.

"Did he, what did he want?"

"To apologize of all things."

"What did you do?"

"I told him I couldn't concentrate on that right now and we would talk about it later." Mouse just grunted at him and continued to type away at something. "You don't seem that surprised that he randomly showed up and apologized for more than a decade of flighty, selfish shit."

"I am not. I talked to him this morning and he asked how to repair your relationship and told him an apology was a good place to start." Mouse was way too nonchalant about his answer but Jay should have figured it out because Mouse was the only one that knew how much he wanted a real apology from Will. He would chalk his dim wittedness up to a head wound.

"Should have guessed, but I am surprised given the little tiff you two had in the hallway."

Mouse closed his computer getting rid of what little light there was in the apartment, leaving only the dim light above the sink. "I have my opinions about Will but he is your brother and he seems genuine about wanting to be in your life and fix things and I think you should give him another chance."

"But," Jay started but didn't know how to finish it without sounding like a whiny child.

"Just consider it, ok? The worst that happens is he meets your expectations and flakes on you again. But at best you get your big brother back."

"I have been fine without him for all these years," Jay defended, not sure how to take all of this. He wanted to trust Will, desperately. Will was his big brother, he had been his first friend, the guy he looked up to, the person he trusted most, until he had left of course. Jay didn't blame him for going to school, he had wanted to be a doctor since he was 10 years old. But he did blame him for never coming home, never giving Jay a break those long four years. He maybe blamed him for all those nights pain kept him awake at Walter Reed, even though it was his decision to join the Army and it wasn't Will's responsibility to take care of him. Will had his own life. And as unfair as it might be, he also blamed him a little for not sticking up for him when their father had kicked him out, even though he had been on the ground with a shattered nose.

"Are you though? Fine I mean, really?"

"Why does it matter to you?" The entire thing was making him uncomfortable because he didn't want to admit how much he wanted Will back in his life because then when it didn't happen, people wouldn't know how much it hurt. But Mouse wasn't people, he was Mouse and he knew without Jay having to say anything.

"Just because you have another brother doesn't mean you don't still love me too," Mouse tried to joke but it fell flat. He sighed, "look, you have saved my life in every manner possible. And I don't just mean when we were overseas or when the Humvee crashed. I mean all of it. If it weren't for you, I would be in a looney bin somewhere, in jail, or a fucking OD in the morgue some cop was too lazy to ID. You never gave up on me, no matter how much I had given up on myself and that shit means something."

"You saved my life enough times too," Jay interrupted him.

"No, I made sure you didn't die, there is a difference." Jay wanted to protest but Mouse wouldn't let him. "There is. There is a world of a difference between living and just not being dead and you hover way closer to that than living." Jay moved the ice pack off his eyes and tilted his head down to look at Mouse, completely confused by his statement. "All you have in your life is work and me. All of your hobbies have to do with being better at your job. You have no social life other than me and you don't talk to your family. You had Erin for a while but you freaked out and dumped her. And there was Maggie for a few weeks before you ended that."

"I almost got her killed." Jay defended his actions.

"I didn't say you didn't have a valid reason, just pointing out you won't let yourself have an actual life and anytime something goes wrong you do something ridiculously dangerous and reckless like allowing yourself to be handcuffed and mock kidnapped by a professional killer or agreeing to do an undercover buy in a place your back up can't see or get to." Mouse's voice was scolding. He of all people should have understood that he had done what was needed and it had all worked out in the end. It wasn't like they hadn't risked their lives nearly every day overseas.

"Now you sound like Will," he groused. "Besides, Voight agreed to both of those."

"Voight's validation shouldn't matter considering the advantage he takes of your, at best fleeting sense of self preservation." Jay narrowed his eyes at him. "I am not trying to pick a fight, just pointing out that you need more good shit in your life, more things that make you think twice when you get twisted up in your little Catholic guilt trips and remember you have people that care if you come home. And if Will can help with that then fuck yeah, I want you to let him back in."

"What happened had nothing to do with a Catholic guilt trip," Jay defended.

"Really, you don't feel guilty over Nadia or because you could snap Erin out of her drug and alcohol fueled downward spiral like you could with me?" Mouse challenged, then softened his voice. "I know you, Blue Jay, better than anyone else in this world. And I know that shit has been hard lately and it is getting to you. It is normal but trying to indirectly commit suicide is no way to handle it.

"That is not what happened." Jay tried to defend himself. They needed to catch Keyes and he was in a position to help. Why was Mouse not getting this?

"You were doing the reverse of suicide by cop and basically and shaking your ass in front of a bunch of murderous gangbangers and begging them to shoot you."

"We needed to catch Keyes, that was the only reason."

"There would have been other chances to catch him. And answer me this, seriously, if it had been reversed and it had been Antonio or Ruzek that had done what you did, would think the risk was worth it?" Jay was about to defend himself more when Mouse's question hit home. No, he absolutely would not have agreed to the whole situation if it had been Antonio that was under instead of him.

"Now imagine if it had been one of them that was captured and tortured. Yeah, I know you can hack it because of your mutant redhead gene and you are a trained fucking Ranger that learned how to handle it both mentally and physically but that doesn't change the way it felt to see that video."

"I was fine. It was fine." Jay explained. Yes, it hurt but it wasn't the worst thing that had ever happened.

"It wasn't fine, fucking Ruzek was crying and Antonio looked like he was going to punch someone. Every member of your team came down to have a talk with me and be reassured that you could handle it, and that includes Voight. But that is all beside the point. You were fucking stupid for agreeing to the entire thing and I would say at least now you will learn, but you won't, because you don't. But you owe Will some time before you get yourself killed." He hadn't realized how badly his team had taken the whole thing. It really wasn't that big of a deal, at least from his perspective. He wasn't sure why they were all so stressed about it. He was fine, a little bruised but he would live.

"Everyone is overreacting. I am OK." Jay tried to remind his friend.

"You keep saying that but I am not going to be able to get the site of you strung up like a fucking deer being used as a punching bag," Mouse said to him, his voice fatter than usual, unintentionally letting Jay know how upset he actually was.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I know you didn't do it on purpose, but one of these days, you are going to have to find a coping mechanism that doesn't involve nearly dying or pushing people you love away from you. Because a day will come that some of those other people may just decide you aren't worth it and fulfill your whole mental whirlwind thing you do because of how Will and your dad treated you.

"And I know that, even though you won't admit it, that Will hurt you worse than anyone ever has and you're scared as fuck to trust him because you don't want to get hurt like that again but part of being more than just not dead is trusting people. And if he he fucks you over again I will deal with him."

"Really?"

"Hell yeah, I will come at him like a spider monkey," mouse joked, lightening the mood. Jay smiled at him and pondered for a few minutes as Mouse went back to typing.

"I'll try," he said then added. "And you have done way more than just make sure I am not dead, trust me."